Banjo-Kazooie XBLA features a few changes from the original Nintendo 64 game. First and foremost, the game now runs natively in 1080p HD resolution. Many of the 2D images in the game such as the talking heads, item icons, and the portraits in Banjo's house appear in a higher-resolution (and in the case of Banjo's pictures, completely recreated).



The text is rendered in a slightly different, larger font. Most of the speech in the game remains the same, save for that which refers to the Nintendo 64 controller (changed to refer to the corresponding Xbox 360 gamepad buttons). The controls have also undergone a slight change. For example, the camera is controlled by the right analog stick, but moves that were tied to the Nintendo 64's C-Buttons remain on actual buttons. The game's draw distance is also vastly increased, preventing the fading-in and fading-out of objects found in the original version.